


Chasing Dragons

by Maybethings



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Public Nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:52:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3184463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maybethings/pseuds/Maybethings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There will come a day when new friends and old children will ask: how did the Iron Bull and Vyera Cadash get together? The answer involves dragons, bare bottoms, and the absolute wrong place to take a bath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing Dragons

There will come a day when new friends and old children will ask: how  _did_ you two get together?

Bull just says, "Woman cracked a dragon over the head with a rock. In her unders."

And Vyera will smile her twice-dimpled smile and say:  _here’s how the story really begins._

* * *

 

Here’s how the story really begins. The Inquisitor and her party have been marching through the Hinterlands for much of the day. They find a campsite. They pitch tents, send some materials back to Haven with a runner. And Vyera Cadash, every one of her fifty-some inches covered in blood, muck and assorted shit, goes to the river to take a bath.

 _(It was the river that ran through Lady Shayna’s Valley,_  Vyera will add with a sly wink, and those in the know will immediately wince. They know what’s coming. Vyera of years ago did not.)

Fifty-odd inches of Vyera Cadash gets cleaned up in ten-odd inches of running water, and the rush of the river helps clear her head some, too. Falling into the Fade, with a big blank space in her head where memories should be, and jaunting all over the place trying to sort out the tangled mess that she’s been flung into; that’s all to blame. Giving her face a final splash, the dwarf stands, starts dressing, and finds herself staring a dragonling in the face.

They just do that for a while, confused. Then the beast’s eyes light up the way hers do when she sees a meat pie left unattended.

Vyera bolts. The dragonling bounds after her.

The rocky ground scrapes raw patches off her soles and the underbrush cuts marks against her shins. She doesn’t care. Every particle is focused on keeping one step, two, more, ahead of her pursuer. She sucks in a breath and when it comes out, it’s not a breath and it’s not a scream and it’s not even a cussword. “DRAGON!!” she shrieks (yes, a shriek, she’s not going to lie and say that she roared it or anything).

Two shakes of a nug’s tail later the Iron Bull’s barreling out of his tent and he yells “WHERE?!”  _far_  too enthusiastically for comfort.

She doesn’t stop to answer. She streaks right past him just as the dragonling’s jaws snap shut just behind her bottom. Bull lifts his giant axe and brings the blunt, meat-tenderising end right down on its head with a satisfyingly crunchy thump. It shrieks in rage and turns on him instead. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t run. He sets his feet and he _grins_ , and something in that look makes Vy’s heart flip somersaults.

There are others on the scene, sure—her party members, other Inquisition grunts—but Bull yells them back. He’s the one dancing in front of the dragon’s jaws, taunting it, dodging its ridiculous talons (and cursing as he fails once). Vy doesn’t have her daggers—damn her luck—but she does have her two hands and strong arms and a fuckton of adrenaline still running through her veins. She seizes upon a rock, darts back into the fray, dodges a wild axe swing and brings it down upon the creature’s head.

And there it is, lying flat on its belly with eyes glazing over and a large axe-blade buried in its spine. Her hands are trembling and spattered with blood and and the only sound is some ridiculous warbler way up high and her breath in her ears.

"Well. I’m impressed," the Bull grunts, and he sounds it. There’s a long, bleeding scratch on one of his arms, and he puts it to his lips to suck the excess blood up. (His tongue is pink, pink, more pink than it has license to be, and—)

"You colossal—bronto," Vyera sputters. "Why take on that thing just by yourself?"

He looks up, shakes the wound off. “Better me, in armour, than the rest of them, half-armed. Or you, half-naked woman with rock. Good bashing arm there, though.”

Every single inch of Vyera is scrubbed and clean and almost every inch is devoid of clothing. She’s glad that her hair is loose and long enough to cover half her chest. Bull is pointedly standing in such a way his broad shoulders and ridiculous pants block everyone else’s view of her, and for that she’s grateful. And embarrassed. Very much so. Before she can go too red, he casually adds, “Still remember where you left your clothes? I promise I won’t peek.”

"…I have a spare set of leathers in my tent," she says wearily, and makes a dash for it behind the cover of his broad bulk. Once her cheeks are slightly less red than her hair, she puts her braids back in and grabs a handful of bandages. "Bull. Let’s get that arm taken care of."

"Hm?" He looks up, and perhaps there is some faint surprise in his eyes. "Nah. It’s fine. I don’t care much about it."

"Well, I do," she replies sharply. (Sharply. That’s the word the Bull uses, even now.) "Now sit down and let me bandage that up for you before it gets infected."

"Nah."

"Really now."

"Seriously, it’s nothing and I don’t need you t—"

"Bull.  _Sit. DOWN._ ”

He sits, and lets Vyera smear the wound with ointment and bind it with clean rags. She knows he’s looking at her some kind of funny. She’s determined not to let it bother her. (Here’s what she doesn’t know about that day, what ‘some kind of funny’ actually was: Bull sees a woman with her cheeks still faintly pink, her hair as red as a banner of courage. Her hands are no longer shaking as she knots the bandages and her eyes are calm and determined. “Thanks for saving my butt back there,” she says when they’re done. “And you know, everything else attached to it.” She smiles, all the way to her eyes and into two dimples, and for a while everything seems just a little less wrong with the world.)

"Wanna do that again?" he asks. He’s only half-joking.

"If there’s a next time I want to keep my armour on," Vyera replies, and then goes bright red as Bull starts laughing.

It’s not the last dragon they’ll fight together. What’s important is that it was the first, the beginning, the start of a  _how_.


End file.
